Chapter-13
About a year after my wedding to Dora, I passed in front of Mrs Steerforth’s house. As I walked by her front step, I heard a voice call out my name.
It was Rosa Dartle, young James’ hammer target. She stepped through the door onto the porch, colourless, thin, and full of superiority. Our meeting was not to be cordial.
“Has the girl found? She asked.
I said she had not.
“She has run away.” She looked intently at my face, her lips working from side to side.
“Run away?” I repeated.
“From him,” she said, with a cold laugh, “If she hasn’t been found by now, perhaps she’s already dead.”
Her steady gaze was cruel.
“Do you want the details?” she asked. She stepped back into the hallway and I heard her call for Littimer, who joined her on the porch a moment later. He bowed in my direction.
“Tell him what you have told me,” she instructed.
He had no reluctance to share his story. He and Steerforth had been in Europe with Em’ly. Steerforth and Em’ly had got along wonderfully; Em’ly was proving quite ready and able to learn new languages and new manners, to adopt new and stylish ways of dressing and wearing her hair.
“She was admired wherever we went,” he said.
But she was often in low spirits, unhappy and homesick. After a while that bothered Steerforth. It made him restless. And the more restless he got, the more unhappy she got, and things worsened.
“At last,” Littimer explained, “after there’d been another nasty battle, Mr James left. He told me to break to her the news that he would not be back, and he suggested that she would do well to marry a respectable person, like myself.”
When Littimer told Em’ly that Steerforth had gone for good, she flew to pieces. He said she had to be held by force and kept from sharp objects and the sea, for fear that she would harm herself.
Littimer had locked her up in a room of the villa but during the night she broke the window and escaped, not to be seen again.
I felt both terror for Em’ly, now truly alone in the world, and joy that she was free.
There was nothing else to say, and I felt quickly. By the time I reached our cottage, I was determined to find Daniel and tell him the news, such as it was. The next evening I went into the heart of London. Since the night of the big snow, so long ago, when he’d been bound for Germany, I’d seen Daniel several times. Although he wandered from place to place, continent to island, in his sad quest yet he was most often in London. I would see him in the dead of night passing along streets, searching among the few who huddled in doorways or slept on benches. I knew he kept a room over the candle shop in Hungerford Market, whether at home or away, and I went there.
He was at home, happy to see a friendly face.
“Don’t expect much, but I have some news of Em’ly. I said as I sat down. “I don’t know where she is, but she is not with him.”
I told him Littimer’s story, sparing no details. Then we sat silently for several minutes.
“What do you think, Davy? Is she alive?” he asked.
“I think she is,” I answered. He agreed.
“Daniel, if she makes her way to London, and what better place to come and hide herself among thousands,” I said, “I think there’s someone here who’s likely to discover her.”
I asked if he remembered Martha Endell from Yarmouth. He said that he had seen her some of the nights when he’d gone searching London’s boat docks and on the streets.
I told him I had seen her too and I thought we should try to find her and ask about Em’ly.
“I may know where to look for her, Davy,” Daniel said, “It’s dark enough to go now.”
For an hour we went up and down streets in the big and dirty city. We were not far from Blackfriars Bridge when Daniel turned his head and pointed to a female figure moving along the opposite side of the street.
“Let’s follow, a bit and see where she goes,” I whispered.
We stayed at a distance, keeping her in sight as we weaved in and out of groups of people. She turned down an empty street heading for the river. At the water’s edge she stopped and moved slowly along it, looking intently at the black current.
“Martha!” My shout startled her.
“Martha, it’s Em’ly’s Uncle Daniel and David Copperfield,” I said. Slowly she came in our direction. “We need your help—Em’ly needs your help.”
She heard our story and asked what possible good she could be in finding Em’ly. “It’s likely that she’ll make her own way back to London, if she’s at all able to travel,” I said, “may you see her, shelter her, and get word to us.”
I wrote our addresses on a slip of paper that she tucked into her thin coat. We followed her a short distance until we reached the busy streets. Then Daniel and I went home, parting with a prayer for the success of this fresh effort.
In the months after Daniel and I had spoken with Martha on the riverbank, we heard nothing from or about Em’ly, and I began to give up hope of finding her. Daniel stayed certain that she was alive and would be found, and he kept up the search.
He was used to visiting Dora and me when he was in London and one evening he arrived in some excitement. He’d met with Martha the night before and she asked him not to leave the city for any reason. She wouldn’t say why or when he’d see her again, and she insisted he should give her his promise.
Almost two weeks later I was alone in our garden when I saw a small, cloaked figure across the road motioning to me. It was Martha.
“Will you come with me?” she whispered. “Will you come now?”
Martha said she had already left a note for Daniel, so I flagged an empty coach and told the driver to take us quickly to Golden Square, according to Martha’s instructions.
We got out in front of a long row of large apartment buildings, and I followed Martha up the central stairway of the third house from the corner, a passageway swarming with renters. We ran to the top story of the house and Martha stopped dead in her tracks on the last step.
“Someone’s just gone into my room,” she hissed back at me, “Someone I don’t know.”
Martha led me through a small door with no latch. We could hear voices, but saw nothing.
“Don’t care about her. It’s you l’ve come to see,” a woman was saying.
“Me? But I don’t know you,” was the soft reply. Em’ly—it was Em’ly voice!
“I’m here to get a look at you,” the first woman said. A shiver ran through me as I recognized the snappish sound—Rosa Dartle. There was unrelenting hatred in her tone.
“I wanted to see the sorceress who took James Steerforth to his doom,” she exclaimed. “So here she is, and what an ugly and pathetic creature! You must have bewitched him for him to consider you worth a moment of his time.”
“Please don’t say such things of me,” Em’ly begged.
“Have you thought,” cried Rosa, “of the harm you have done to the family?”
“I think of nothing else but my poor uncle and of Ham and the pain I’ve.”
“What?” came the strangled screech. “Such vanity for an earthworm! You think I care about your family? I’m talking about his family, his home—where I live.”
“No!” shouted Em’ly, “I believed him, trusted and loved him.”
“You loved him? You? Disgusting!” Rosa shrieked. Then a shrill, joyless laugh followed. It was quiet in the room for several seconds and when she spoke again Rosa’s voice was low and dripped with acid: “I can’t breathe in the same air as you. If you are still here tomorrow, your true character will be shouted in all four directions. Go away or die!”
We heard Martha’s door open, and at the same moment I heard a sturdy tread on the steps. I stepped out into the hall and saw Rosa push past a small gathering of people at the top of the stairs. Daniel’s head rose over the landing and he came up at a run, not pausing before he rushed into the room with the open door.
“Uncle!”
There was a loud sob and we reached Martha’s door just as Daniel caught the fainting Em’ly in his arms.
“My dream’s some true, Davy!” he shouted over the crowd. “I knew it would.”
Daniel was at our kitchen door early the next morning. He came inside and Aunt Betsey poured us all a cup of tea.
“Trot’s been telling me about the miracle,” she said to him, “How did Em’ly get back?”
It was several pots of tea and a basket of biscuits later when the story was all told. Em’ly had escaped from Littimer at night, frightened and confused and lost. Believing Daniel’s old boat-house was moored close by, she went running along the sea-beach to find it. She cut her arms and feet as she ran and fell on the sharp stones of the beach, and finally exhausted herself so she couldn’t get up the last time she fell. It was daylight, cold and gusty, when she woke. She was covered by an old coat and there was a woman sitting beside her. She took Em’ly back to her cottage. Em’ly was sick with fever for a week, but when the fever broke she slept peacefully for two days. She came to her senses on a beautiful Sunday morning, thinking she was home in Yarmouth, and her heart broke fresh when she realized she was nowhere close to anything familiar. When she got strong again, the woman and her brother put her aboard a small trading ship going to Leghorn, Switzerland, and then to France. She had taken a job as a maid for travelling women at an inn, and one day she thought she saw Steerforth. That was enough of a fright to set her off for England and she set ashore at Dover.
“Em’ly went to London, without a penny,” Daniel said, and my aunt clucked and shook her head for the fiftieth time, “There aren’t many choices for a poor young woman in the city, and Martha Endell knew just where to keep an eye out. I’ll owe her a debt of gratitude all my life.”
“Are you taking Em’ly back to Yarmouth?” I aksed.
“No home for her there anymore,” Daniel sighed, “Nor here either, I’m sure. There are great countries far from these shores, and our future lies in one of them. I’ve been thinking of Australia. No one there will know what she’s been through. A ship leaves in eight weeks and we’ll be leaving on it.”
Daniel had to take the news of the glad return to Peggotty and to Ham in Yarmouth, and he wanted company for the trip, I agreed to go.
The ride to the seaside village was quickened by our high spirits. We went at once to Peggotty’s house where delight at the news set her to jumping and singing. Ham came in towards the end of the story and took the knowledge that Em’ly was safe at last with a calm thanksgiving. Something about the way he looked at me when we all said good night suggested there were things left unspoken and I went looking for him at the boatyard the next morning.
“Davy, have you seen her?” he asked when we’d left the dock.
“Only unconscious in Daniel’s arms,” I answered, “It might be too painful for her right now to see anyone but Daniel. But if there’s a message you want to send, I’ll find a way to get it to her, Ham.”
“I loved her, Davy. You know that.” He said this so earnestly that my heart ached for the hurt that years had not quelled. “But she’s had enough grief to bear and she needs no more guilt heaped on that. Can you find a way to let her think I’m no longer mourning for her and that I’m not tired of life?”
I said I’d try to set her heart at peace but, walking back to meet Peggotty and Daniel, I wondered how I could convince her of something I didn’t believe.
